According to the developers of 3D model, it will help doctors diagnose the disease more accurately and will them make ready for complex surgical procedures. This new imaging technology will process hundreds of medical scans to generate a perfect virtual 3D model of the human body.
Sergio Aguirre of California startup Echopixel says, “What our software is doing is taking advantage of that data and presenting it in a format where they can actually see the body parts from that data and interact with them in a three dimensional space”, and further added that the doctor’s can peel away virtual layers and examine tissue and organs deep within the body.
With the use of this technology in clinical trials, surgeons were able to more effectively correct congenital heart defects in newborns at the same time it helped to decrease the amount of time it took to prepare for the procedures.
ZSpace, which creates real world virtual reality systems, developed special monitor and glasses to run the software. The virtual 3D image enabled surgeons to visualize tiny blood vessels and practice their surgery before stepping foot in an operating room.
Aguirre stated, “These vessels are sub-millimeter and the newborn patient is the size of your hand. So they basically get imaged and we use our software to help the doctor to understand the curvature of the vessels, to follow the vessels all the way through the lungs and determine which vessels need to be surgically repaired “.
According to Dr. Louis Wexler of Stanford University, who has been at the forefront of medical imaging for more than half a century, told that this technology’s ability to transform hundreds of 2 dimensional images into an interactive 3D model is a game changer.
Wexler stated, “It is going to be a tremendously useful tool for the surgeon. Some surgeons are very good at looking at X-RAY images, CT images, MR and imagining but this shows them exactly what it looks like in the body”.
According to Wexler, the technology will save time and improve accuracy of medical procedures, which will ultimately translate into saving patients money and giving them access to better medical care. And further added, “To see an object inside the body, identify it and lift it out of the body was pretty exciting. But that isn’t enough. One has to begin to think about how is that going to help in your clinical evaluation of something “. That is something we have to wait and see.
